Instructor Information

Instructor: Dr. John C. Molluzzo - Chair, IS, New York

Office: 161 William Street, 2nd Floor. Room 241

E-mail: jmolluzzo@pace.edu

Telephone: 212-346-1780

Fax: 212-346-1863

Web Page: csis.pace.edu/~molluzzo

Online Office Hour: Dr. Molluzzo plans to have an online, real-time office hour once each week during which you can ask questions about course material. Days and times for this activity will vary. Once the semester starts, see the Course Calendar in Blackboard CourseInfo for the day and time of the online office hour.

Course Description

This course covers the basics of operating systems theory – memory, processor, device, and file management (Chapters 1-8). It will also discuss and demonstrate these operating systems functions as realized in MS/DOS, Windows 2000/XP, and UNIX/Linux (Chapters 12-14).

Course Goals

This course will give you an understanding of the functioning of a modern operating system. At the completion of the course, you will be able to understand and explain how a modern operating system manages the computer's four basic resources:

Main memory - RAM
Processor(s) and processes - CPUs and programs; inter-process communication and concurrency; security
Peripheral devices - hard drives, printers and so on.
File resources - the file system

You will also be able to:

Demonstrate by example the basic algorithms used by modern operating systems. These algorithms include:

Dynamic memory allocation - best-fit and first-fit

Demand paging - FIFO and LRU page removal

Process scheduling - First-come-First-served, Shortest Job Next, Round Robin, Priority queues

Deadlock prevention

Process synchronization - Test-and-set, WAIT and SIGNAL, semaphores, producers/consumers, reader/writer

Search and seek optimization for hard disk drives

File system access control - control matrix, control lists, lockwords

Explain how a modern operating system, such as Windows XP or UNIX/Linux, allocates its resources in each of the four resource catagories.
Use a modern operating system effectively.

Text

Flynn, Ida M. and Ann McIver McHoes, Understanding Operating Systems, 3^rd ed., Brooks/Cole, 2001.

Course Support

The course will be conducted using Blackboard. To access Blackboard, you must go to the web site blackboard.pace.edu. The course site will contain announcements, assignments, Web links, grades, and other information. You must check the course site at least every two days.

Technology Requirements

Internet access
Use of a Web Browser (Netscape 4.X or higher, Internet Explorer 4.X or higher) to access Blackboard
Web surfing and searching skills
E-mail capability
AOL Instant Messenger (you do not need AOL for this.) Dr. Molluzzo will use IM (Instant Messenger) for the online office hour. Dr. Molluzzo will give you instructions on its use. You can download a copy of IM from the following site: http://aim.aol.com
Use of a word processor - preferably Microsoft Word. If you use another word processor, be sure you can save files in Rich Text Format (RTF format).

Course Outline

Readings

You MUST keep up with the assigned readings in order to take part in a meaningful way in the Discussion Board and to complete the homework assignments. Make sure that you begin reading each week's assignment on time. Allot enough time each day in your schedule to do the reading and the assigned homework.

Week 1: June 3-9

Chapter 1 – Overview
Chapter 2 – Memory Management, Early Systems

Week 2: June 10-16

Chapter 3 – Memory Management, Recent Systems

Week 3: June 17-23

Chapter 4 – Processor Management

Week 4: June 24-30

Chapter 5 – Process Management
Chapter 6 – Concurrent Processes

Week 5: July 1-7

Chapter 7 – Device Management

Week 6: July 8-11

Chapter 8 – File Management

Discussion Board

You MUST participate in the weekly Discussion Board on Blackboard. You are required to make at least two(2) postings to the weekly forum each week. A posting can be an answer to a previously posted question (made by the instructor or a fellow student) or a new question on the week's readings. This will ensure that you are actively engaged in the course material and keeping pace with the class. See Participating In The Discussion Board for more information on the Discussion Board.
Readings for each week are contained in the Readings section of this page. I will post initial questions on that reading on the Discussion Board on the Monday of each week. Your postings must contribute in a meaningful way to the topic under discussion. Try to start reading the Discussion Board Forum on each Monday. (This means that you should try to get most of the reading done on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of each week.) Make sure that you check the Discussion Board several times each week. Try to make a contribution to one of the discussion threads each time. It would help if you set aside a specific time a few days each week for this activity.

Papers

To do research for each paper, you will be might required to obtain information from the Web. Dr. Molluzzo will supply you with an list of Web resources and guidelines for using them.
Papers must be submitted in Microsoft Word format (or .rtf - Rich Text Format, if Word is not available). All papers will be submitted via the Blackboard DropBox.
Each paper MUST be named according to the following convention:

yourlastname-PaperX.doc. Thus, Joan Smith's second paper must be named

Smith-Paper2.doc

Late Papers - All papers are due on midnight of the due date. Late papers will be penalized 2 point (out of 20 possible points) for each day late.

Course Requirements

Required homework problems
Two(2) papers that may require Internet search and readings
Discussion Board participation discussions

Grade Distribution

Activity	Value
Participation in the Discussion Board	20 points
Paper 1	20 points
Paper 2	20 points
Homework: 5 points for first week 7 points each of last 5 weeks	40 points
Total	100 points

Converting Your Numeric Grade to a Letter Grade

Average	Letter Grade
>= 94	A
>= 90 and < 94	A-
>= 87 and < 90	B+
>=84 and < 87	B
>= 80 and < 84	B-
>= 77 and < 80	C+
>= 74 and < 77	C
>= 70 and < 74	C-
>= 65 and < 70	D+
>= 60 and < 65	D
< 60	F

Course Policies

Academic Honesty - All students are expected to read and adhere to the CSIS Statement on Student Responsibilities.
Grades for papers and exams will be posted in each students personal grade book on Blackboard.
Withdrawal - Same policy as all other Pace courses for Summer, 2002.
Netiquette - See Participating In The Discussion Board for suggestions on how to use the Discussion Board and how to "behave" while making postings to a forum.